Nikki Haley spent Memorial Day in Israel, writing graffiti on artillery shells, not honoring America’s fallen. She wrote, “Finish them! America ♥ Israel! Always, Nikki Haley.”
These shells aren’t destined for Normandy beaches or Iwo Jima pillboxes. In Gaza, Hamas mingles with civilians, and they will rain down on women and children, too. That’s a moral quandary Haley won’t even acknowledge; she pushed it away when she said,
“What America needs to understand is, if Israel’s fighting our enemies, how can we not help them? America needs to do whatever Israel needs and stop telling them how to fight this war. Until you’ve lived it, you can’t say how to fight it. You’re either a friend or you’re not a friend.”
(See story here.)
Many of us “understand” that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very complex problem. To say “you’re either a friend or not a friend” is simplistic. It’s also a resort to “us versus them,” and “you’re with us or against us,” claptrap.
It’s claptrap because it’s a false choice. It’s dishonest because it leaves out the Palestinian civilians; she didn’t even mention them.
It implicitly demonizes humanitarian concerns, and implies that criticizing Israel’s government is anti-Israel. (By this logic, speaking against Biden’s policies is anti-American.) It attempts to silence criticism of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war.
As for “telling [Israel] how to fight this war,” what they do with our munitions is our business. You can’t hand a gun to someone and then say you’re not responsible for what they do with it (see, e.g., school shooter Ethan Crumbley’s parents).
Nikki Haley is deaf, blind, and dumb to the civilian suffering in Gaza.
Get a soul, lady.
